


no space among the clouds

by quietlyintoemptyspaces



Series: Spitting Image [1]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fae & Fairies, Gender or Sex Swap, M/M, Mama Stilinski Feels, Panic Attacks, Rituals, Sheriff Stilinski Finds Out, Slow Build, Virgin Sacrifice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-13
Updated: 2013-07-13
Packaged: 2017-12-20 02:40:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/881990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietlyintoemptyspaces/pseuds/quietlyintoemptyspaces
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His entire body feels alien to him, all soft curves and bouncing bits where before he’d been angular and lean and masculine. His mother’s dress fits him nicely and he slips her flats onto his feet and her barrettes into his hair and sees the ghost of her in the mirror. He stares for five minutes before he remembers he has school. </p>
<p>He has no idea how he’s going to explain this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	no space among the clouds

**Author's Note:**

> I started this because of all the gender-changing spells I’ve read about being all “wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am” and then now you’re a girl or a guy or whatever. And apparently my brain doesn’t let me rest and be all accepting about that. I’m not ragging on anything, honestly, it’s just the way my brain works.
> 
> Like thinking about the forensic anthropology book I read in high school and all the Bones I’ve watched. There are skeletal differences between males and females, chemical differences, not just primary and secondary sexual characteristics, i.e. what you see on the outside. So I imagined having my entire skeleton change to accommodate a different sex and I simply thought… Ouch.
> 
> Because shedding the uterine lining once a month is painful enough, I imagine forming a uterus and ovaries from scratch would be downright excruciating. Not to mention losing everything and gaining everything and shifting… Pretty much everything has to change. So I put my knowledge to use.
> 
> And then I got into Mama Stilinski feels and found myself in a whole new world. So yeah.
> 
> Also, there will be a few slips from he-him to she-her, but it’s intentional.
> 
> (And this is obviously AU, at least after Season Two. Sadly, I haven't watched anything in Season Three. Yet. But I'm honestly terrified to watch it because of everything I keep hearing and seeing... That and I hate being on edge waiting for the next one. It's what I used to do with the Harry Potter books: I'd refused to read one until the next one came out.)

It’s useless, Stiles thinks vaguely, hoping that for once something will go okay, that there’s really nothing bad or evil or bloodthirsty or puckish waiting for them in the middle of the woods, in the middle of the night. Because, evidently, Beacon Hills is the new Sunnydale, except instead of soulless vampires there’s heartless werewolves, and in place of a stubborn librarian there’s a cryptic vet. And demons would probably be welcome right now, rather than these shiny creature-things flitting and laughing and throwing sparkling, zappy, glitter bombs at a group of teenagers and their not-so-friendly neighborhood werewolves.  
Stiles doesn’t get to think about it all that much before one of those flower-smelling glitter bombs smacks him in the face and he blacks out in a cloud of fairy dust itching in his lungs.

-

-

He’s not out long enough.

-

-

Stiles lands on his back, breath stolen by the impact possibly, or maybe the intense wave of pain spreading through his entire body. It feels like a bunch of little hooks pushing into his flesh, pulling him apart from the inside out. The very marrow of his bones is aflame, razors in his skin, metal claws twisting in his belly. 

He must be screaming but it’s hard to tell. Distantly, he feels hands holding him down, pain echoing and barely easing through his ankles and wrists with the hot-cold touch of werewolf magic. It doesn’t help, not really, just escalates until everything hurts.

Stiles begs, he thinks, whimpers for an end because it feels like he’s being shredded, and surely death will be nicer than all of this. He wishes he could breathe a sigh of relief when the darkness finally settles, but there must be an elephant standing on his chest preventing it.

-

-

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Scott, wide eyes looking haunted. Behind him it’s hard to tell the forest from the night sky, so Stiles can’t have been out long, and whatever happened earlier must have passed because there’s no more pain, even if he does feel a little different, though he supposes that’s what happens during spontaneous combustion or whatever the hell it was. A little personal atomic bomb for all he knows.

Fairy dust or pixie-loaded glitter bombs or whatever they’re called are apparently no joking matter; there’s still a thrum of magic coursing through him, a strangely empty echo that makes him want to scratch at his skin until whatever it is gets out of him.

Sitting up, Stiles sees that Scott’s not the only one giving him weird looks. Everyone is sitting in a circle around him, wide-eyed and gaping and looking strangely hurt. Stiles frowns and groans and wonders if he can get away with flopping back on the ground and just have someone of the werewolf persuasion to carry him when Scott speaks.

“Dude,” he says softly. “Whoa.” There’s a few more seconds of silence before Stiles finally just turns a dull-eyed glare on him. “No, seriously. You look—Dude, you look like your mom.”

Stiles breath hitches in his chest because they don’t talk about his mom, just like they don’t talk about Scott’s dad. And he knows he looks like his mom. That had been the hardest thing his dad had to get over when she’d died, because apparently Stiles had inherited everything from her, looks and laughs and grins and the boxes of her things in the attic.

“What?” he says, but it’s not his voice. It’s softer, lighter, and not his. “What? Scott, what’s happening?” His not-voice shakes like the air that’s stuck in his lungs, waiting to expel but refusing to be let go. Stiles moves to put his hands on his chest, to ensure himself that he’s still breathing, his ribs moving up and down, but he’s softer, thinner, his hands smaller than they were just moments ago. Hair that wasn’t there before curls gently around his ears, rests lightly against his sweaty forehead. He takes stock, notes his clothes are too loose, there’s too much wiggle room in his shoes, his underwear is a strange fit, and he’s actually aware of his nipples because they are probably five times more sensitive than they should be.

He slides his hands down and around and doesn’t care that he has an audience. His skin is strange and foreign to him, his body not his own, and he might have fun later exploring it, but right now he’s allowing himself to freak the fuck out.

Stiles is pretty sure he’s stopped breathing.

-

-

Scott’s the one who takes him home, in the end, after he’s had his panic attack and flipped his shit. The rest of the wolves are searching for the shiny, flitty, sex-change people-things to figure out how to reverse this because Stiles isn’t a he anymore. He is a she and is already getting confused about pronouns. It’s the least crazy thing he can think about at the moment.

The Sheriff’s home. The Sheriff’s home and his son is a daughter and Stiles has no idea how to do this right now, has no idea what to say to make this okay because he can’t just say he was hanging out with Scott and then boom, he’s a girl. Magic soup or magic water or something. He’s going to have to explain werewolves and hunters and strange magic things that he still doesn’t fully understand and he can’t do this right now.

The sound of a ceramic mug breaking on the floor fills the silence of the kitchen, echoes in the dullness where sound should be. Stiles is afraid to look, keeps his eyes firmly on the broken pieces at his father’s feet and the dark puddle of coffee without cream and contemplates what he’s going to do if his dad says this is too much. 

It is too much but his dad won’t say that.

It takes three quick strides before Stiles is being engulfed in a warm hug, breath hitching as his dad speaks. “Stiles…? Stiles what is this? Why do you look…?” His voice cracks and breaks and he tries to wrap his mind around this even though he doesn’t know what this is. “What happened?”

Stiles grabs onto his dad’s shoulders and clings, buries his face there. He’s a little shorter now, but not by much, just a few inches. It’s enough. The tears come in a flood, with gasping, choking sobs that feel like they’re ripped from his new chest. Scott stands beside them and doesn’t leave.

-

-

“Werewolves?” the Sheriff asks skeptically, because werewolves don’t exist outside of movies and books and Stiles feels a Twilight joke coming on. He may have gotten everything from his mother, but he got a fair share from his dad, too. “Stiles, I know I’m behind in pop culture references, but I’m pretty sure I’ve never heard of werewolves causing… this.” He motions his hand towards Stiles, encompassing everything that’s happened in the past hour or so.

“Scotts a werewolf,” Stiles adds helplessly with a shrug.

“But you’re not?”

Stiles shakes his head, the short length of his hair a strange feeling against the back of his neck. “I was offered once, but I think I’m more valuable as a human. It helps, having someone around who doesn’t have to worry about wolfsbane and mountain ash.”

“I…” the Sheriff rubs his forehead. “I can’t deal with this.” He holds up a hand when Stiles opens his mouth to speak. “I’m not… I’m not dismissing it, Stiles. It’s just a lot to take in at the moment.” He gives a dark laugh that Stiles is too familiar with. “Certainly explains a lot, I suppose. So, fairies or something did this to you? Are you going to change back?”

He asks like it’s up to Stiles, like he can just choose not to change back into who he was before. It hasn’t crossed his mind, honestly. But he’s never felt closer to his mother.

“I don’t know.”

-

-

Scott brings down his mother’s boxes before he leaves.

Stiles stays up the rest of the night doing laundry.

-

-

His entire body feels alien to him, all soft curves and bouncing bits where before he’d been angular and lean and masculine. His mother’s dress fits him nicely and he slips her flats onto his feet and her barrettes into his hair and sees the ghost of her in the mirror. He stares for five minutes before he remembers he has school. 

He has no idea how he’s going to explain this.

-

-

He gets strange looks because he still looks like Stiles, but he looks not-like Stiles, too, because he’s girl today, in his mother’s spirit, and he feels like he could be her.

Isaac leans next to him at his locker, watches his hands shake, and spares a small smile. “You look like you’re getting married.”

Stiles starts and glances down. It’s a simple white dress, something his mother crocheted in her younger years, when he’d been knee-high and preoccupied with spare balls of yarn, watching her fashion something out of what had seemed like nothing. Like a barrier made of a bag of mountain ash that hadn’t been enough.

“Or maybe a hippie child missing her flower crown,” Isaac adds, buts it’s gentle, not mocking. And she returns his smile.

-

-

Unfortunately, his sudden foray into womanhood doesn’t change the fact that up until yesterday he was a guy and he keeps forgetting he’s a lady now.

He’s really grateful the dress is long to cover for his faults.

-

-

Stiles is dragged along to Derek’s even though nobody’s found anything with instructions on how to reverse this. Peter looks as shocked as Derek does, even though Derek was there last night, two steps ahead of him the entire time, saw the entire process from him to her.

“Well, this is certainly unexpected,” Peter says, taking Stiles in from head to toe with a slight smirk. “Brings a new meaning to virginal though, doesn’t it?”

Yeah, Stiles will give Peter that one, considering he does kind of look like a virginal sacrifice. Derek is still staring, wide-eyed like he was last night, and there is no reason he should be as shocked as he is. Stiles isn’t even that shocked anymore. Much.

“Dude,” Stiles says. “You saw me last night. Hell, the way I was freaking out I’m pretty sure you’ve seen more than I have.” He might have half-stripped trying to figure out what the hell was going on. Everybody got an eyeful last night except Stiles because he still wasn’t sure about the whole thing.

Derek doesn’t say anything and doesn’t really look away, just shift’s awkwardly on his feet and frowns. Peter chuckles darkly because he’s a weirdo who enjoys things like this. “Apparently my nephew has been struck dumb by your womanly wiles. You’ll have to forgive him.”

Behind Stiles, Scott snorts and mutters, “Womanly wiles? Stiles?” Louder he says, “You should have seen him sitting in class today. The only thing womanly,” here he does a box shape with his hands, “is his packaging.”

Stiles shrugs. “Yeah. Aside from the fact that I look pretty much identical to my mom now, I’m still Stiles.” Silence reigns for a moment and he bounces on his heels and right, extra bouncy bits. Probably shouldn’t do that too often. “Find anything?”

“No.” Derek’s voice is brusque, brooking no argument. Softer, he adds, “You should be more careful.”

Stiles can feel her temper flaring, and it seems sharper somehow, more focused, as she crosses her arms over her chest and glares at Derek. “I’m sorry. I’m not the one who dragged my ass out of bed last night to go tramping around in the woods searching for something nobody can identify. For all we know it was fucking Tinkerbell and her merry band of fairies. I’m a girl, Derek! The fucking mirror image of my dead mom, and I almost broke my dad’s heart last night because of it.” Stiles takes a deep breath, tries to let her rage cool. “I get that I’m the human, that I need to be extra careful because I don’t heal automatically from pretty much everything. That doesn’t mean I’m just going to sit back and let everyone else do the work for me.”

Derek’s eyebrows look kind of helpless. Stiles has no idea how he manages that, but Derek did it. He clears his throat and Stiles waits, expecting, hands on her hips and feeling vaguely sassy. “I just meant that… Your scent might attract things. Dangerous things.”

Scott frowns behind her and Peter chuckles. “My scent?” That’s… not what he’d been expecting.

“It’s… different,” Derek hedges, moving his hands awkwardly in the air. “More… pure. Womanly.”

Stiles gives Derek a dull looked, one eyebrow arched. “Really? You’re saying I smell like a virgin waiting to be sacrificed?”

Stiles is pretty sure Derek actually blushes at that. “No. You… it’s… hard to explain.”

Peter steps up beside him, head tilted lightly, one side of his mouth curling in an expression Stiles knows all too well from his creepy alpha days. “What Derek’s trying—and failing—to say is that you smell like an untouched woman at the peak of her fertility.”

Stiles can feel the way her mouth is gaping, not expecting that explanation at all. “You know, it’s amazing how creepy you can still be. Do you take classes or does it just come naturally?” Peter shrugs, unbothered. “Right, so. Good to know I have like two weeks before I get my first period.”

Peter laughs. Cackles, really, and shakes his head. “That wasn’t what I meant. Whatever did this had a reason, and I suspect breeding was a big part of that. So let me be the first to congratulate you on your new status as a baby maker.”

-

-

It’s entirely possible Stiles went white as a sheet and then fainted at the news, but he doesn’t remember falling, or hitting the floor, or anything really, except for waking up in Derek’s bed, Derek’s back facing him as he stared out the window.

Stiles watches him for a few minutes before slipping back into sleep.

-

-

Stiles had meant to visit his friends at the Jungle. Just a quick stop in to say hi, show them his new skin, have a drink and a chat and then go home to cook dinner for his dad.

The guy eyeing him with too much glitter should have been a tip off.

-

-

This time when Stiles wakes up, he’s not in Derek’s bed. He’s not in a bed at all. There’s some kind of stone slab beneath him, like something out of Celtic mythology, and iron chains holding him down, arms and legs spread eagle. His mother’s dress is pulled up around his hips and he’s really, really trying to fight down the panic but he’s not sure it’s working.

There’s a hiss and a series of clicking noises behind him and he twists awkwardly to see a vaguely humanoid-shaped creature with skin that looks like the backs of beetles coming towards him. He can’t tell if it’s supposed to be female or male or if this species of whatever even has separate genders, but he doesn’t want to stay and find out. He’d really rather go home and find out how to be a girl because there has to be websites on this.

The beetle-person-thing walks around Stiles a few times, possibly eyeing him up, plotting his fruitful rape, and then starts drawing strange symbols on his thighs in what might be mud, and drawing lines down his arms across his face and this is totally going to be a ritual sacrifice of his virginity. He’s going to be forced into having bug-people babies, only they might be eggs or larva or something really freaky and creepy that Peter would probably laugh at.

But first, of course, they have to leave him to let the mud bake into his skin.

-

-

The shackles they have her in are a substantial weight against the fine bones of her ankles and wrists, makes her feel like she’s stretched out further over the sacrificial rock, harsh sun beating down on her until she feels like she’s being held in a brick oven, the yarn of her dress itching at her skin.

The mud has long since dried and flaked, leaving behind heavy stains that make her woozy with the heat. It feels like something has been burned into her, flame and fire flickering in her veins.

It makes her want to look forward to what they have planned for her.

-

-

Stiles listens to the growls and screams of a fight through the haze of a fever, hums a little to herself as the night breeze cools her skin and waits for what’s to come.

-

-

With a growl of red eyes, his shackles are broken, the weight lifted, but the heat is still there, stifling.

Vaguely, Stiles can recall trying to climb Derek like a tree and posturing like a cat in heat and it’s all very embarrassing. It’s not his fault, he knows that, but it’s still there in the back of his mind being on all fours, dress hiked up and begging to be mounted. Which is all very… very.

Stiles hates literally being a damsel in distress.

-

-

Once again Stiles finds herself waking up in Derek’s bed, but instead of her mother’s dress, she’s only wearing a simple shirt, worn and big and more than likely Derek’s. It makes her feel very feminine, wearing a man’s clothes, and it’s ironic, considering, but she shrugs to herself and moves to stand. The shirt barely comes to mid-thigh but luckily she’s still wearing the single pair of ladies underwear that she owns.

They were bought out of pure curiosity, but now she’s kind of thankful.

Downstairs she finds Derek and Peter sitting on opposite sides of the couch. They both turn to look at her as she comes down, identical expressions on their faces and she would laugh if she weren’t so tired and still feeling the residual dredges of embarrassment. She plops down between them, unladylike as she can be and she’s not even sorry for it.

Peter rises with a sly grin and that obnoxious tilt to his head and exits with a brief, “I’ll leave you kids to it.”

Stiles waits for a few moments before saying, “Dude, he’s so obnoxious. What’s his deal?” She’s not expecting an answer and she doesn’t get one, but she does let her head roll to the side to see Derek watching her carefully, expression guarded.

“We found a way to get you back,” he says instead. “Pretty much just do what you’ve been doing and stay out of trouble.”

Stiles lets their shoulders knock together and laughs. “When has that ever happened? You know, that’s probably why they call it Beacon Hills. Beacon, like it brings all the crazies to the yard.” Derek, Stiles knows, is trying very hard not to roll his eyes. They sit in silence for a few moments, Stiles in constant movement, before she asks, “What if I don’t want to go back? What if I like how I am now?”

Derek’s entire body goes rigid, taut with tension. “You’d have to resume the ritual.”

The mud lines on her thighs and arms are faded, practically gone, and her skin smells vaguely of pond scum, which is something she should have realized before. She narrows her eyes at Derek. “You dumped me in the pond, didn’t you?”

Derek looks twitchy, which isn’t all that unusual. “You were trying to hump my leg.”

Stiles hums in thought, fiddling with the hem of Derek’s shirt on her thighs. “Does that mean the virginity part or the baby part?”

Derek sighs, deep and heavy. “I don’t know.”

Stiles nods absently. “Would you—if I asked?” she questions quietly.

He stares at her, gaze as heavy as the memory of weighted chains against her joints. They stare at each other for a long moment, unflinching and touching, pressed side to side on a couch with more than enough room until Derek speaks.

“Yes,” he says finally. “I would.”

Stiles reaches for one of his hands and curls her fingers around his palm, lets it sit in her lap as her thumb runs across his knuckles.

“Okay,” she says, and releases a breath she hadn’t been aware she’d been holding. “Okay.”

**Author's Note:**

> I got the title from Florence and the Machine's Lover to Lover, which I only know about because of Haley Webb's video The Great Leap Forward, which is like, so freaking awesome. Seriously, you should go watch it.
> 
>  
> 
> http://effortlessandnonetooserious.tumblr.com/


End file.
